Chasing chimeras

Christmas day was spent with Lara and Laura and Ariadne (because we can't get rid of her) and there was White Wine In The Sun (because it has to now be capitalised) and we ate lots of noms and sat around watching films: Clue, The Addams Family, The Ring 2, Dungeons and Dragons, and Ghostbusters 2.

Dungeons and Dragons is the funniest movie I have ever seen. Oh god, you guys, I can't even fully describe it.

And The Ring 2 isn't scary at all except for when Samsara comes crawling up the side of the well at the end which was PURE UNDILUTED NIGHTMARE FUEL and suddenly my cool collectedness was flying all over the couch and squealing. I didn't hold with that, Samara, but thank you for not being in the verydark driveway just now when I walked Laura out. (Lara kept making comments about how Naomi Watts had to watch out because she was hanging out with Satan, and we decided there was a secret pact that The Ring series was only allowed to have Australian/New Zealand actors in it.)

Alison is at the coast and an Alisonless LFoD is a sad and wrong LFoD.

It's now 11.30 so... Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night. I'll catch you on Boxing Day. (DISCLAIMER: All previously mentioned catching will be online only as I plan to not leave the house even a little.)

Now... TO THE TEA!

On Friday we (Alison, Ness, Sam, Tim and myself) did the road trip thing from Christchurch across to the West Coast to spend the weekend at Alison's family's bach at Lake Kaniere. (For the non-New Zealanders reading, bach = holiday home. I don't know if a bach has to be on a lake/beach to be a bach. This might be information a local needs to provide here...)

The trip across is about three and a half hours and we all squished ourselves into Tim's car, the three of us in the backseat dozing off and waking when we hit the bumps in the road that sent our heads smashing into the roof.

( 'Alright, you've proved your journey, in photo format.' )

For the Amanda Palmer show in Wellginton we didn't get the Danger Ensemble as everyone else in the world did, as they stayed in Australia - but we did get a very awesome opening act called Battle Circus, a rock band from Auckland. Or, as their website says, Well, it's not quite rock, maybe metal/circus/baroque-esque psychedelic rock with Eastern-European influences.

I inbed videos now!

( Three videoclips )

They were freaking sweet live. I'm not used to anything like this coming out of New Zealand. I stole a copy of their EP - The Half-Light Symphony - from Alina, and it is epic and post-apocalyptic and and the shortest song is nine minutes long.